Developers may be no more curious about salaries than any other set of workers, but their high degree of variation in terms of education, skillset and experience – not to mention the often ill-defined nature of their work – gives them ample reason to be curious about pay among their peers.
Stack Overflow, a community site …

Re: No server side development, no Unix

No Embedded or Driver development either.

Are we getting silo'd in our branches?

I mean - I can see how Stack Overflow is would be biased towards Web development, seeing as they are a web-based entity.

But... I do C/C++ for ARM Cortex-M MCUs so small that they usually don't have an OS. But whenever I happen to meet software engineers from other disciplines and happen to tell them as much, half the time their immediate reaction is bewilderment; they can't imagine a system without a full-blown OS or a file-system.

I can see how Python could be rising in popularity - among web developers. But I've yet to see a Python compiler for an ARM M0+.

Re: No server side development, no Unix

I imagine that S.O. maintains their own servers and codebase. Accordingly, they would have more sysadmins and Ruby developers (ref. Atwood's blog) to bounce things off of, than C/C++ folk.

Further, the algorithm modeling salary development is going to be based on data from U.S., so the maximums are going to differ from e.g. U.K.. Further, unless they paid someone for better data, the (croud-sourced) data-mass that they do have is going to be rather heavily reflecting the S.O. power-user base. Since nobody else bothers filling the questionnaire.

Re: No server side development, no Unix

Re: No server side development, no Unix

and rating 'Web Devs' as earning MORE than desktop application developers? W.T.F. ??

that goes DOUBLE when you look at the quality of web development these days. Or are they assuming that all desktop applications are UWP/C-pound/dot-NOT (which is a pretty worthless skill set in my opinion)

I do embedded and kernel-level stuff (and all that other stuff when I have to) so, meh.

Re: No server side development, no Unix

Average salaries are interesting but then so is the distribution. Web Devs may on average be earning more than desktop app developers however I have managed to earn considerably more than that average my entire career due to a mix of language skills, flexibility (intellectual not physical) and domain knowledge. You need that variability of income in order for it to be worth making an effort to exceed the norm. If all jobs pay roughly the same in a sector it all becomes a bit meh.

Note that the British levels appear to hit a ceiling *very* quickly- the figure for twenty years experience is barely higher than that for five, unlike the US.

This would seem to confirm the general trend that the UK as a whole- or at least England- does not value or encourage technical and engineering-based skills and employment. But then, what did you expect from a nation more obsessed with making money from watching house prices inflate ludicrously than actually doing something useful?

Okay, so I put in my details, and it gave me a result where the lower end salary was *significantly* higher than I'm earning.

So in theory, according to Stackoverflow, I'm being massively underpaid.

But the thing is, I've done the research; I know what the jobs market is like right now, and I can tell you that even the lower figure suggested by SO's calculator is unrealistic -- the job available out there (even the ones advertised on SO itself) simply do not offer salary figures that high.

I suspect that the SO calculator is biased based on the kind of people who answered their survey. I would guess that higher paid developers were more likely to respond to the survey than low-paid ones, and thus the figures are skewed. Or possibly it's intentionally overstating it in order to inflate egos and expectations.

So in theory, according to Stackoverflow, I'm being massively underpaid.

Well, at your next review, I think you can claim to have found an "independent" salary assessment tool that, being on SO, has to be taken into account .... industry standard ... feel happy ;-) Get them!

Re: $ to pound £

It's in Manchester. I'm not saying there aren't interesting jobs nor smart people in Manchester, but virtually the only place you are going to get decent salaries in tech is in London. Our top sysadmins are on about £80k, same as our top developers. Head of IT, I've seen his Camden townhouse, he's getting at least 3 times that.

Re: $ to pound £

It's in Manchester.

I think the industry sector is also relevant. You see a lot of very well paid jobs in London, the best paid are in banking/finance, and many of them require finance experience as well as tech skills (also degrees but that's a different article).

I'd say it's inevitable that if you say you live in London, and you don't work in finance, the salary calculator will suggest you're massively underpaid. At least it did for me......

Well..

Considering my crushing disappointment and unrewarding day to day job experience with old language which I do like, in a company with its soul ripped out, in the area I'm in I'm quite fortunate with my salary. Of course the results look inflated no one would pay that in the north England. Programming Sucks ™